Legendary magazine writer Pat Jordan penned the epic “Thin Mountain Air” for Philadelphia Magazine in 1994. The story pulled back the curtain on the reclusive Phillies’ Hall of Fame pitcher Steve Carlton whose relationship with the media was beyond adversarial. And when I say “pulled back the curtain”, I mean that it showed the beloved pitcher to be a fucking lunatic:

He believes that the last eight U.S. presidents have been guilty of treason, that President Clinton “has a black son” he won’t acknowledge and that his wife, Hillary, “is a dyke,” and that the AIDS virus was created at a secret Maryland biological warfare laboratory “to get rid of gays and blacks, and now they have a strain of the virus that can live ten days in the air or on a plate of food, because you know who most of the waiters are,” and finally, that most of the mass murderers in this country who open fire indiscriminately in fast-food restaurants “are hypnotized to kill those people and then themselves immediately afterwards,” as in the movie The Manchurian Candidate. He blinks once, twice, and says, “Who hypnotizes them? They do!”

…and it just gets weirder from there.

Earlier this month, Deadspin republished the story as part of “The Stacks”, their collection of classic bits of sports journalism. The phrase “must read” gets thrown around a lot, but trust me when I say that this is something you really must read. It’s honestly hard to believe that a guy that popular can be so loopy.